Disability Standard

Disability Standard Update

After the Disability Standard 2009, we consulted with members and other stakeholders about their future needs. They told us that the Disability Standard is:

•    Useful for gaining leverage and recognition for disability.

•    Credible but resource intensive.

•    Not straightforward to complete or explain.

•    Useful to allow for comparison again previous performance.

•    Good for gathering learning from other organisations.

•    Needs to be more versatile to meet the specific needs of individual organisations.

Respondents also reiterated the need for EFD to recognise the demands on an organisation of benchmarking all diversity strands separately.

An initial consultation session with a cross-section of EFD members was held in June. We were given helpful feedback and told that we were thinking along the right lines.

We are pleased to share our proposals for the future of the Disability Standard, which are: 

•   Redevelopment of the Disability Standard website make it more flexible, including increased storage and information sharing capability.

•    Restructure and design of the Disability Standard to develop an online, short, plain English best practice assessment to be included with EFD membership.

•    Members to be able to input information into the revised Disability Standard tool at any time with the option of booking an EFD assessment package* at a convenient point in the year to review progress.

•    Further tailored analysis of specific functions/work areas to be developed according to member need.

•    EFD assessment to include entry into an annual benchmark, the first of which will fall in 2012.

*Gold member package will be available.

Further information will be released as development progresses. We plan to make the revised Disability Standard available to members from Easter 2011. If you would like to be involved in the consultation process please contact the team at disabilitystandard@efd.org.uk or on 0207 403 3020.